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#21
Yeah, $99 bucks certainly not a big investment, so I understand why you would do it. I too agree, I would not have spent $300 more to go from the Intel 6700 to the 7700. Especially considering the price difference is only $35 at NewEgg. $349 versus $315.
And I wasn't saying buy a $99 video card. I meant, if it came down to a $400 video card, or a $499 video card you would likely get more bang for the buck putting an additional $99 into the video card.
Yeah, I think it was more a matter of Crysis being poorly written. Nothing could run that game maxed out. But I remember the endless chatter about this being "the" benchmark for any build.
See, I would disagree with you here. You "can" spend crazy money and get the absolute top of the line made today. But in 5 years, that top of the line is going to be nearly the same as 2-3 steps down from top of the line compared to what is going to be out. Both would be very ancient.
My previous build was in 2009 and I bought a Core 2 Quad Q9550 and overclocked it from 2.83Ghz to 3.40Ghz. Top of the line back then was a Core i7-965 Extreme Edition which was about $1,000. My CPU was around $300. But today a Core i3-4170 outruns both of them. A Core i3!!!!!!!. So, had I splurged and went $1,000 for the CPU instead of $300 for the CPU, here in 2016, both are outperformed by a $115 Core i3.
Everybody has different priorities. For me personally, I would rather buy a $1500 computer today, and a $1,500 computer in 3 years, and another $1,500 computer 3 years after that, then spend $4,500 on a computer today. Things change so rapidly that you will want new things that don't even exist today. Like USB4, or DDR6, PCI-Express V2. So my mindset is always to buy something decent and solid, but never at the top of pile. Then, in a few years, get something new, hand the old computer down to your kids, or another family member, or use it as a test box, whatever.
So, don't take my post the wrong way. I'm not trying to say you are doing anything wrong. I just have a different line of thinking.
Personally I think your $1599 box from Microcenter seems like a really sweet deal and a good sweet spot. For Christmas, i built my 9 year old a box and spent right around $1400 including a 24" Dell Ultrasharp monitor, a mechanical keyboard and a gaming mouse. It was a Core i5-6500, 16GB of DDR4, a 512GB PCI-Express SSD, 2TB 7,200 RPM drive, a Gigabyte GA-z170x-UD3 mobo with an EVGA 1060 FTW+ video card. For the games he plays and what he does, it's a great box. It runs fabulously cool, was $125 less than a Core i7-6700 (at the time I bought the parts).